Tag Archives: Julián Carrón

The Fraternity of Communion and Liberation sponsored a forum in which the Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches attended and spoke about matter pertaining to peace-building in the Middle East. Notable in attendance were the Mayor of Rome and Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Patriarch Gregory of the Melkites, one of the most out-spoken Catholic patriarchs, said that if the international community could create the State of Israel it should also work for peace there. The conflicts in Israel and Palestine are destroying the fabric of peace, culture and family. Freedoms are of religion and conscience are not universally respected in all the countries of the Middle East. It was noted that Saudi Arabia gives no freedom of worship and conscience to their inhabitants.

The following flyer is being distributed by the lay ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation this weekend as a humble attempt to understand, in a serious way, what the Ground Zero-Mosque building proposal means in light of our saying we believe that Jesus Christ makes a difference in the way we live and see reality around us, and how He is truly present among us. If we really believe that Christ abides with us, then how do you (we) evaluate value of the current Christian-Muslim-unbeliever tensions? Do we, as believers, assess reality according to the way everyone else does, or do we Christians assess reality in a new way, in the way Christ sees reality?

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque at
Ground Zero has resulted in the outrage of many Americans and the recent public
discussion about “Islamophobia” in America. These events provoke us to affirm
the following:

1. We notice a growing tendency to manipulate circumstances to
serve as a pretext to create a public furor that demands people make a choice
between one of two pre -packaged, ideological positions. We refuse to engage in
a debate about whether or not to build a mosque at Ground Zero. The reality of
Islam in America brings up questions that go much deeper than that of the
construction of one mosque.Indeed, one critical and open question is how contemporary American
culture comes to grips with the human person’s religious sense.

2. Many of
those among the cultural elite, as well as many who hold the levers of power in
our nation, have abandoned the religious tradition that informed the lives of
the vast majority of their ancestors: Christianity. They have reduced it to a
moral code or a vague myth, linked to a man dead for more than 2,000 years. Instead,
they have embraced a “scientific” outlook on human life. But science provides
no answer to those questions that continuously gnaw at the human heart, such as
the problem of justice, the meaning of human life, or the problems of suffering
and evil. In fact, science tends to stifle them.Hence, contemporary American culture finds itself weak and
tremendously uncertain about any response to universal human inquiries and
longings.

3. Just over two weeks ago, we marked the 100th anniversary of Mother
Teresa of Calcutta’s birth. One who looks at her sees a resplendent human
person, overflowing with love for everyone, especially strangers of different
religions. Her humanity touched all: religious and atheist; Muslim and Hindu;
rich and poor. Mother Teresa’s life invites anyone who seeks truth to open his
or her heart and mind and take a fresh look at Christianity.

4. For serious
Christians, the challenge of Islam, the large-scale abandonment of
Christianity, the emptiness of the dominant culture, and the witness of Mother
Teresa signal the urgent need for conversion. Pope Benedict XVI recently said
that “conversion…is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct
in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close
communion with Jesus as a real and living Person.”The Pope brings us face to face with the defining difference
between Christianity and Islam: one religion bases its response to the human
person’s religious sense upon a message delivered 1,400 years ago, while the
other offers the experience of a Man who died but is alive and present with us
today.As Fr. Juliàn Carròn,
President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, recently affirmed:
Jesus’ message and even all the miracles He performed were not enough to
overcome the sadness of His disciples on the road to Emmaus –only His risen
presence could ignite their hearts once again.

5. We are not Islamophobic, nor
do we fear our post-modern world.On the contrary, we invite all to look at Mother Teresa and at the Man
to whom she gave her life.In His
Person, present with us today, all can find the Truth that alone will deliver
the freedom America promises.

This coming Monday is the fifth anniversary of the election
of Pope Benedict XVI. Communion and Liberation is encouraging people to attend
Mass, pray a Rosary, or attend Eucharistic Adoration on that day to pray for
the Holy Father, in thanksgiving for his witness to Christ.

The following
letter is from Father Julián Carrón, the President of Communion and Liberation,
sent to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (April 4, 2010).

Let Us Return,
Wounded, to Christ

Father Julián Carrón

None of us has ever been as dismayed
as we are in front of the heart-wrenching story of child abuse. Our dismay
arises from our inability to respond to the demand for justice which springs
from the bottom of our hearts.+The request to assume responsibility, the
acknowledgement of the evil committed, the reprimand for the mistakes made in
the handling of the affair – all of this seems to us to be totally inadequate
as we face this sea of evil. Nothing seems to be enough. And so we can
understand the frustrated reactions that have been coming forth at this time.

This
has all served the purpose of making us stand face to face with our demand for
justice, acknowledging that it is limitless, bottomless – as deep as the wound
itself. Since it is infinite, it can never be satisfied. So the
dissatisfaction, impatience and even the disillusionment of the victims are
understandable, even after all the injuries and mistakes have been admitted:
nothing can satisfy their thirst for justice. It’s like entering into an
endless struggle. From this point of view, the ones who committed the abuse are
paradoxically facing a challenge similar to that of the victims: nothing can
repair the damage that has been done. This in no way means that their
responsibility can be lifted, and much less the verdict that justice may impose
upon them; it would not be enough even if they were to serve the maximum
sentence.

If this is the case, then the most burning question, which no one can
escape, is as simple as it is unavoidable: “Quid animo satis?” What can satisfy
our thirst for justice? This is where we begin to feel all our powerlessness,
so powerfully expressed in Ibsen’s Brand: “Answer me, God, in the jaws of
death: Is there no salvation for the Will of Man? No small measure of
salvation?” In other words, cannot the whole force of human will succeed in
bringing about the justice that we so long for?

This is why even those who
demand it most, those who are most insistent in calling for justice, will not
be loyal to the depth of their nature with its demand for justice if they do
not face this incapacity that they share with all men. Were we not to face it,
we would fall prey to an even crueler injustice, to a veritable assassination
of our humanity, because in order to keep on crying out for the justice that we
formulate according to our own measurement, we have to silence the voice of our
hearts, thus forgetting the victims and abandoning them in their struggle.

It
is the Pope who, paradoxically, in his disarming boldness, has not fallen prey
to reducing justice to any sort of human measure. To begin with, he admitted without
hesitation the gravity of the evil committed by priests and religious, urged
them to accept their responsibility for it, and condemned the way certain
bishops in their fear of scandal have handled the affair, expressing his deep
dismay over what had happened and taking steps to ensure that it not happen
again. But then, he expressed his full awareness that this is not enough to
respond to the demand that there be justice for the harm inflicted: “I know
that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed
and your dignity has been violated.” Likewise, even if the perpetrators serve
their sentences, repent, and do penance, it will never be enough to repair the
damage they did to the victims and to themselves.

Benedict XVI’s recognition of
the true nature of our need, of our struggle, is the only way to save our full
demand for justice; it is the only way to take it seriously, to take it fully
into consideration. “The demand for justice is a need that is proper to man,
proper to a person. Without the possibility of something beyond, of an answer
that lies beyond the existential modalities that we can experience, justice is
impossible… If the hypothesis of a ‘beyond’ were eliminated, that demand would
be unnaturally suffocated” (Father Giussani).

So how did the Pope save this
demand? By calling on the only one who can save it, someone who makes the
beyond present in the here and now, namely, Christ, the Mystery made flesh.
“Jesus Christ … was Himself a victim of injustice and sin. Like you, He still
bears the wounds of His own unjust suffering. He understands the depths of your
pain and its enduring effect upon your lives and your relationships, including
your relationship with the Church.”

Calling on Christ is not a way to seek a hiding
place to run off to in the face of the demand for justice: it is the only way
to bring justice about. The Pope calls upon Christ, and steers clear of a truly
dangerous shoal, that of distancing Christ from the Church, as if the Church
were too full of filth to be able to bear Him. The Protestant temptation is
always lurking. It would have been very easy to give in to, but at too high a
price – that of losing Christ. Because, as the Pope recalls, “it is in the
communion of the Church that we encounter the person of Jesus Christ.” And so,
aware of the difficulty both the victims and the guilty have “to forgive or be
reconciled with the Church,” he dares to pray that, by drawing near to Christ
and sharing in the life of the Church, they “will come to rediscover Christ’s
infinite love for each one of you,” since He is the only one able to heal their
wounds and rebuild their lives.

This is the challenge facing all of us who are
incapable of finding an answer for our sins and for the sins of others: agreeing
to take part in Easter, which we celebrate during these days, as the only way
to see the re-blossoming of hope.

There is a phrase of Dostoevsky that accompanies me these
days, when I have to speak of Christianity to all kinds of people in Italy and
abroad: “Can an educated man, a European of our time, believe–truly believe–in
the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ?” This question rings like a
challenge for all of us. It is precisely on the answer to this question that
the success of the faith depends today. In an address given in 1996, the then
cardinal Ratzinger answered that faith can have this hope “because it finds a
correspondence in human nature. In man there is a nostalgic hope for the
infinite that cannot be extinguished.” In this phrase he indicated the
condition necessary: that Christianity needs to find the humanity that pulsates
in each of us in order to show all the greatness of its claim.

Yet how many
times are we tempted to look at the concrete humanity in which we find
ourselves–for example the unease, the dissatisfaction, the sadness, the
boredom–as an obstacle, a complication, an impediment to the realization of
what we desire. Thus we get angry with ourselves and with reality, succumbing
to the weight of circumstances, in the illusion of going ahead by cutting away
a piece of ourselves. But unease, dissatisfaction, sadness, and boredom are not
symptoms of a illness to treat with medicines; this happens more and more often
in a society that mistakes disquiet of the heart for panic and anxiety. They
are rather signs of what the nature of the “I” is. Our desire is greater than
the whole universe. The perception of emptiness in us and around us of which
Leopardi speaks (“want and emptiness”), and the boredom of which Heidegger
speaks, are the proof of the inexorable nature of our heart, of the boundless
character of our desire–nothing is able to give us satisfaction and peace. We
can forget it, betray it, or even deceive it, but we cannot shuffle it off.

So
the real obstacle on our journey is not our concrete humanity, but disregard
for it. Everything in us cries out the need for something to fill the void.
Even Nietzsche perceived this; he could not but address the “unknown god” that
makes all things. “Left alone, I raise my hands/ … to the unknown god / I want
to know you, you the Unknown,/ Who penetrate deep into my soul, / Shake up my
life like a storm,/ Beyond my grasp and yet so close to me!” (1864).

Christmas
is the announcement that this unknown Mystery has become a familiar presence,
without which none of us could remain a man for long, but would end up
overwhelmed by confusion, seeing his own face decompose, because “only the
divine can ‘save’ man, that is to say, the true and essential dimensions of the
human figure and his destiny” (Fr. Giussani).

The most convincing sign that
Christ is God, the greatest miracle that astonished everyone–even more than the
healing of cripples and the curing of the blind–was an incomparable gaze. The
sign that Christ is not a theory or a set of rules is that look, which is found
throughout the Gospel: His way of dealing with humanity, of forming relationships
with those He met on His way. Think of Zacchaeus and of Magdalene: He didn’t
ask them to change, but embraced them, just as He found them, in their wounded,
bleeding humanity, needful of everything. And their life, embraced, re-awoke in
that moment in all its original profundity. Who would not want to be reached
by such a look now? For “one cannot keep on living unless Christ is a presence
like a mother is a presence for her child, unless Christ is a presence now –
now! -I cannot love myself now and I cannot love you now” (Fr. Giussani). This
is the only way, as men of our time, reasonably and critically, to answer
Dostoevsky’s question.

But how do we know that Christ is alive now? Because his
gaze is not a fact of the past, but is still present in the world just as it
was before. Since the day of His resurrection, the Church exists only in order
to make God’s affection an experience, through people who are His mysterious
Body, witnesses in history today of that gaze capable of embracing all that is
human.

Father Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion & Liberation

An article by Father Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, has been published by the Italian daily, Avvenire. The article is titled “A Challenging Mercy” and is related to the letter Pope Benedict addressed to all Bishops after the polemics about the lifting of the excommunication of bishops in the Society of St. Pius X. I recommend the article.

About the author

Paul A. Zalonski is from New Haven, CT. He is a member of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, a Catholic ecclesial movement, and an Oblate of Saint Benedict. Contact Paul at paulzalonski[at]yahoo.com.